My Dog, My Mom and Murderers
By Michelle Teheux
My dog, Ginger, died on July 20, 2020. My family made the difficult decision to end her life when she stopped eating and had trouble walking. She was an ornery little beagle mix we adopted from a shelter in 2003, and she was thought to be at least a year or two old then, so she was probably 18 or 19 when she died. It was a peaceful death. She died surrounded by everyone she loved petting and kissing her and telling her how much we loved her.
In 1997, my mother died of cancer. Like Ginger, she was unable to eat or walk at the end. Unlike Ginger’s peaceful passing, my mother’s death was horrifying. I sat up with her on her last night, and though she hadn’t been able to speak for weeks, she was moaning in pain until we finally got a doctor to order morphine. It took hours to get the order approved, and I can only imagine what kind of pain she was suffering. All that last night, I listened to the death rattle. There was fluid in her lungs, and suctioning her eventually stopped helping. The next morning, when I left to shower and check on my then-young children, my father and sister arrived to sit with her. I just missed her passing, and I’ve always wished I’d been there. Watching her die sealed my decision that if I am ever diagnosed with a similar condition, I will end my life before I grow too infirm to do it myself.
In this country, we’re debating whether we should be putting prisoners to death by lethal injection. You may have heard the story on NPR that details how prisoners’ lungs fill with fluid, causing them to possibly die in agony instead of in peace.
This debate doesn’t happen in other civilized countries, where executions by the state are generally a thing of the past. Conversely, there’s a growing trend to allow doctor-assisted peaceful deaths to end the suffering of people with painful final illnesses.
I want us to know why we grant peaceful deaths to our beloved pets but not to people suffering with a painful terminal illness. I want us to ask if we really think we should be bringing death to prisoners, and if so, why we cannot at the very least give them a painless passing.
If we can do it for my Ginger, we can do it for human beings.
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